Making its UK premiere, the hit Broadway musical comedy Something Rotten! plays Theatre Royal Drury Lane on Monday 5 August and Tuesday 6 August.
Something Rotten! in Concert stars Jason Manford (The Producers, The Wizard of Oz, National Lottery’s Big Night of Musicals) as Nick Bottom and is directed by Tim Jackson (Two Strangers (Carry A Cake Across New York), Merrily We Roll Along).
Also on the cast are Gary Wilmot (Anything Goes, Wicked) as Nostradamus, Richard Fleeshman (Company, Urinetown) as Shakespeare, Marisha Wallace (Guys & Dolls, Oklahoma!) as Bea, Evelyn Hoskins (Waitress, Spring Awakening) as Portia, Cassius Hackforth (For Tonight, From Here to Eternity) as Nigel Bottom, Steve Furst (Oliver!, Matilda, Little Britain) as Shylock, Ashley Samuels (Hairspray, The Book Of Mormon) as Troubadour, Cameron Blakely (Disney’s Newsies, Mrs Doubtfire) as Brother Jeremiah and Jenna Boyd (Come From Away, The Wind in the Willows) as Lady Croydon.
The full Broadway score is performed by the London Musical Theatre Orchestra, conducted by Freddie Tapner (Love Never Dies, Chess, Kinky Boots).
Something Rotten! was created by Hollywood screenwriters Karey Kirkpatrick (Chicken Run, James and the Giant Peach), John O’Farrell (Best-selling novels include The Best a Man Can Get, May Contain Nuts, The Man Who Forgot His Wife) and Grammy Award-winning songwriter Wayne Kirkpatrick (Change the World by Eric Clapton), who together went on to adapt Mrs Doubtfire into the West End and Broadway Musical. The show follows the story of Renaissance writers Nick and Nigel Bottom as they seek to outshine Shakespeare by writing the world’s first musical.
Something Rotten! originally opened on Broadway at the St. James Theatre in 2015 and received several Best Musical nominations, 10 Tony Award nominations and was hailed by Time Out New York as “the funniest musical comedy in at least 400 years”.
